Android is growing, no doubt about it, but not at the break-neck speed some may have hoped for in the beginning. Still, the open source mobile platform is gaining momentum where it matters most- mobile-based ad impressions.
Mobile marketing firm AdMob reports that Android now totals six percent of the smartphone market in terms of operating systems and is tied with Palm as the fourth-largest OS based on ad impression data collected by the firm. The major ingredient to its growth is the impact the Android Market app store has made in a relatively short period of time. According to AdMob, Android-based ad requests increased an average of 47 percent per month in the first five months following the app store launch in November 2008.
Beyond the App store, the G1 itself appears to be gaining some traction. In the US in March, it was the number 10 overall device and the number four smartphone, after the iPhone, BlackBerry Curve 8300 and BlackBerry Pearl 8100. Combining the growth of the App store with the growing popularity of the device it runs on means the future looks bright for Google, HTC and T-Mobile.
